This essay was written before the deaths of both my daughter Megan and Glen Hansard. It exists in a different time, a different life. I’ve left it essentially as it was.
The 2008 Academy Awards is where I heard it first. I was in the midst my acoustic folk-punk performance phase with the underappreciated, influential, Shrevepudlian band Atomic Drawers, selling out open mic nights all over the…
Well, you can’t really sell out an open mic night, and we only really played three or four different places, but damn, we had fun. And we were angry.
Watching the Academy Awards, this scruffy guy playing a beat-up guitar sat nervously on that massive, lit stage, with a young brunette woman accompanying on piano. They both looked slightly out of place and petrified. They began the song, a romantic number about falling, or something-or-other, with lilting harmonies and manufactured emotion. Gross.
I was fixated on the dude’s left hand on the fretboard. These were basic chords. This is a basic song. I could play this song, and I suck. But this guy wrote this simple little tune and he’ll probably make a million dollars for it. There is no justice. This is what the public wants. The public is scared of Atomic Drawers.
I don’t even remember the melody, the words, nothing. I just remember being disgusted that such a simple song could win an Oscar. Screw these people. It was like learning to play Margaritaville (three chords? Four maybe?) and realizing that Jimmy Buffett had fleeced all of humanity with the simplest chord progression ever. What a racket.
****
Fast forward a long, long time, to April 2023, and I had been living in a dour apartment in Divorce Acres for a couple of weeks. An especially rainy April for Colorado, downpours and drizzle arrived every afternoon and evening. At first, it reminded me of Louisiana, of lazy, damp afternoons where nothing was done because nobody was going out in this rain. But after a few days, the nostalgia wore off, and I felt trapped, bored, and alone.
I didn’t have cable nor any big streaming subscriptions except for Amazon Prime. I would scroll through the paltry, streaming “Samsung TV” listings and watch Frazier re-runs most evenings or look for a movie I hadn’t seen. Or lie on the floor and stare at the ceiling, or read a book, or write meandering prose or themeless poetry and listen to Dave Brubeck, or any combination of these things.
How I came across Once is a mystery. But I watched the trailer and saw that the filming style was cool, a little washed out, and rainy; Dublin in a saddle season perhaps, a setting for a story about a street musician and a cute girl he ends up playing music with. It seemed like a fitting choice for the weather. I hit play.
The film was only an hour and twenty minutes long, and nothing too heavy or too light ever really seemed to happen. It was like secretly watching two people’s lives unfold from a short distance away, like eavesdropping. But it throttled me. I don’t know if it was the loneliness I felt in that little apartment, suddenly detached from almost everything I’d previously known, or the weather, or the mixing of all these factors meshing into the gears of this little film, but I was smitten. My chest hurt at the end. But I felt ever so slightly better. About everything.
I can’t say precisely why I loved it. People have tried to describe the “why” of love for forever, but in the end, it’s impossible to find the specific truth as to why we deeply love any creation, or any person for that matter. It just is.
And the song, the theme song of the movie, was that simple tune I’d seen performed at the Academy Awards fifteen years prior, a broadcast I’d watched in a big, warm home with my then-wife and daughters.
****
The sun finally came out, the big settling-up occurred, life went on with many more drastic changes, and I found myself living in a little house a few miles away from Divorce Acres.
Once had been on my mind since I’d recommended it to a new friend over sushi one night. I’d tried to get my teenage daughter to watch it the prior week, but she took a look at the trailer and was not at all interested. What I noticed, in watching the trailer, was that just the trailer—of a movie I’d already seen—again made my chest hurt.
I decided I needed to re-watch it and shake out any lingering emotions. Can’t watch a simple little movie about a busker and a Czech girl and potentially get weepy in front of any potential new friends.
I found it on Prime, and pressed play, on a perfectly clear summer night in the warm embrace of my sofa in my little house. But I might as well have been in my Divorce Acres apartment with rain soaking the windows. Because when the theme song arrived, about fifteen minutes in, clouds had formed over my head. Rain was threatening to soak my face. The story unfolded and the clouds moved on. But my chest ached.
When the credits rolled, I looked over at my dog.
“Carmine, I don’t think we’re going to share this one. With anyone. Ever.”
The film is available to anyone who wishes to view it. But I don’t think I could watch it with somebody who did not experience it as I do. As crazy as that sounds, it could be a deal-breaker.
****
A few nights later, lying in bed in a fit of insomnia, I fumbled around the nightstand for my phone and was soon mechanically scrolling through Facebook. I saw an ad for Glen Hansard at the Paramount Theater in Denver, a week and a half away.
Glen Hansard. The dude from Once. Without even thinking about it, I bought two tickets, which seemed to alleviate the insomnia.
The next morning, a serious question arose: Who am I going to take? This concert was not a dude show. This was reserved seats in an old theater with an artist who might make me weep. No, not a show to go to with a buddy. But not to fear; I have several female friends who I’m sure would love to go.
Later that day, I set about contacting each of them via text.
“Hiking in Europe.”
“Cant fit in a coffee until September.”
“No. Thank you.” (Maybe that one wasn’t so much a friend? More investigation needed, but not at this moment.)
The last one text-ghosted me mid conversation. (Sidenote: the abrupt nature of modern communications appears to be the standard, but I find it profoundly discourteous. Maybe I need to send more interesting texts in order to compel response.)
I racked my brain for someone to take but came up blank. I certainly wasn’t going to try to get a dating app date; a concert first date would be too fraught with variables.
And besides, I’m in solitude for first time in a quarter century and all that. Perhaps this is the universe testing my fortitude for aloneness. I should go alone. Solitary Man. I do lots of stuff alone.
But this is a concert. And what about the empty reserved seat next to me?
Please. I’m a bald white dude in my fifties. I do not exist to the general public. Nobody cares or notices if I’m alone. Nobody.
If anybody asked about my adjacent vacancy, I’d make up a tale about my missing date, a wonderful lass I met in Dublin and with whom I spent a foggy evening bonding over Guinness and Glen Hansard in a dusty little pub. Our plan had been to reunite in Denver one year to the date later, for this concert, but she’d suddenly been called away to Africa for Doctors Without Borders. She would not make it to the show. But in a crackling, distant phone call from Kinsasha, she had implored me to go without her, please, so that at least one of us could experience Glen Hansard, and think of me, darling, for it is so difficult here in the Congo, but the work of healing must be done.
Or something like that.
****
Saturday, day of show. Still no date. I’m going alone. I give my dog a bath and watch a bit of College Gameday, then go down to a VW garage to talk Vanagon with some fellow wrenchers. Back at the house, I sit down to watch some football and eat a burrito from a little place down the street. One of the chips, one of those gnarled, stacked knots of tortilla that didn’t quite separate falls to the floor. Carmine snaps it up and crunches it in his mouth, tail wagging furiously.
The plan is to watch this Directional U of Missouri versus Directional U of Alabama game for a while, take a shower, then head downtown to the Paramount. I decide not to try to sell the other ticket; I kind of like the boldness of an empty seat next to me.
I’m watching the game, sun shining into the living room. It’s not fall yet but oh, can I feel it. This afternoon is a great test-drive for the upcoming season. I’m on the couch, and Carmine is in his dog bed next to me—
Wait, where’s Carmine?
I look down to see him standing perfectly still with his tail so far between his legs, its fluffy white end is poking out under his chest. I’ve seen this before. He doesn’t feel well, an extreme rarity for a dude as upbeat as Carmine. I get down on the floor with him and gently press on his legs, his chest, his belly, his ears, and get no negative response from him. He’s just standing there with the most forlorn look on his face. I pick him up and put him on his bed, coaxing him to lie down. He finally does.
I’m not to the point of taking him to pet urgent care. I’ll keep a close eye on him, though. I pet him, tell him he’s a good boy and it’s okay, and we watch football together. I know I can’t leave his side if he’s not feeling well, because while I don’t feel like this is mortal, I won’t be able to think of anything else unless he’s running around, causing trouble, wagging that tail.
It’s around 5 PM now. Carmine is sleeping, but his breath is not rhythmic; he looks uncomfortable. I walk the house and look for signs of anything he might have gotten into, torn up, whatever. There is nothing. And then I remember that gnarl of chips.
Damnit. An oil-laden, multi-tiered chunk of chips like that has made my stomach hurt before, and I weigh in at about twenty times Carmine’s tonnage. My boy has a tummy ache and we have to ride it out. I’ll give him until 6:30 to be back to normal, and if not, my evening plans must change.
Time ticks on. One game ends and another begins. Carmine is awake, looking out the window, but refuses to leave his bed. At 6:45, I call it. No free-solo attempt at a concert for me tonight. We settle in.
At around 9 PM, Carmine pops up, runs around the coffee table twice, and bolts for the back door. I give chase and let him out. He’s back to normal.
****
It turns out, I’m not alone. Carmine is not so much of a pet as he is a housemate and an equal, the one friend who has truly been with me throughout all of the upheaval of the last five years. He was looking at me the moment I decided to get sober, wagging his tail and anticipating a walk, and has been at my side ever since. (He’s also seen Once twice.)
I don’t know what it means. Maybe if we’re aware enough, or desperate enough, in times when we need change, we look for doorways to take us out of the room we’re in. We fumble about, always looking for signs which point the way to our next chapter. But even if we find the door, we have no idea that we’ve walked through it until months or years or perhaps lifetimes later.
I did not get to see Glen Hansard and *not* share the experience with anyone.
I don’t need a test.
Joseph D Trussell 